2019 Developer Skills Report research.hackerrank.com Intro
Programming is like art—both the process of writing code and the code in itself. Converting an idea that only existed in your head into reality is an unparalleled feeling. It’s a kind of mindfulness that keeps you in a state of flow when you love the work you do. And, when your product impacts millions of developers and helps them find the right place to work—it’s both exciting and scary!
At HackerRank we have had the opportunity to build a product that’s used by a community of more than 5 million developers (more than 20% of the world’s developer population) and more than 1,200 customers to match every developer to the right job based on skill. The underlying infrastructure of the hiring process is going through a dramatic shift. Candidates are now being evaluated based on their skills and not their pedigree. This opens up a lot more opportunities for developers and smart companies worldwide are recognizing this and making the shift.
We surveyed our community with questions ranging from which technology they find the most promising to what they look for in a job and during the interview process. More than 70,000 developers participated in the survey (that’s right!) and enclosed is a treasure trove of insight on what’s happening in the land of developers.
Enjoy the report and as always feel free to tweet @hackerrank or email us [email protected] your comments. Let’s build an even playing field!
Vivek Ravisankar Co-founder & CEO HackerRank
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Calculators First coding project by age are the new games 0%
Developers’ first coding projects have evolved over the course of two generations.
More specifically, if you’re a developer over the age of 38, chances are your first project was 20% a game. Meanwhile, younger generations were most likely to build a calculator as their very first project.
Some developers had unique first projects. Here are a few of our favorites: 10%
• I created a program that contained all the math and physics rules to help me solve my homework assignments. • “Hacked” a flash game to give me infinite health and ammunition. 0 • I built a “What college should I go to?” randomizer.
Game Calculator To-do list Mobile app Desktop app Hello, World
Management system Basic functional website
21 and under 22 to 7 to 5 54 to 72
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Languages known in 2017 vs. 2018
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 0 80
JavaScript: 2018’s a aS i a a
most popular language n
++ When comparing the most popular languages that developers were learning year over year, we found that developers were learning JavaScript at the most rapid rate. In 2018, 73% of developers said they knew JavaScript, up from 66% in 2017. This also makes S i JavaScript 2018’s most well-known language, compared to Java in 2017.
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Student developers are the exception. Only 42% of student developers in 2018 said they knew JavaScript. This could be because JavaScript isn’t taught in most university computer science programs, so more developers learn JavaScript once they’re out of school and creating applications for work.
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Known in 2017 Known in 201
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[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Developers are as eager as they were last year to learn Go, Kotlin, and Python in 2019. Languages developers want to learn in 2019 Interestingly, developers’ interest in Scala has dropped, whereas their interest in TypeScript has increased. Scala was the 3rd most popular language that developers planned to learn in 2018 but dropped to 6th place in 2019. JavaScript Java TypeScript went from being the 5th most popular language to learn to #4. The lan- C Python guage’s rising popularity is most likely because of the ubiquity of JavaScript and the fact C that many major JavaScript frameworks use TypeScript. In fact, almost a quarter of PHP developers know Typescript this year, up from 15% last year. C# TypeScript Pascal Ruby R Perl Go Swift Scala Kotlin Haskell Lua Clojure Rust Erlang OCaml Julia 0 10% 20% 0% 40%
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 React poised to overtake Frameworks known in 2017 vs. 2018 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
AngularJS in 2019 An a S S in
a AngularJS continues to be the most popular framework that developers know. However, more and more developers have begun to learn React. The percentage of S developers who know React jumped from 20% in 2017 to 26% in 2018. AS
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[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 The number of developers who know React is likely to keep increasing. It’s the #1 Despite developers taking a stronger interest in React, companies’ appetite for this framework that developers want to learn in 2019. The transition from Angular 1 to front-end framework outpaced the number of developers who knew React in 2018. Angular 2 did not allow for backwards compatibility, which could explain why develop- The JavaScript ecosystem is constantly evolving and often difficult to keep up with, ers are moving towards a different framework. React is also considered to be simpler but it’s obvious that learning React is a worthwhile investment for developers. and more flexible than AngularJS, making it poised to overtake AngularJS.
Frameworks hiring managers want Frameworks developers want to learn in 2019 vs. frameworks developers know
40%
0%
0%
20%
20%
10% 10%
0 0
JSF ASP JSF ASP React Vue.js Spark Struts Cocoa React Vue.jsStruts Spark Spring Django Ember Meteor Spring Django Cocoa Ember PyramidPadrino Meteor PyramidPadrino Angular JS .NETCore ExpressJS Angular JS ExpressJS .NETCore Backbone.js Backbone.js Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails
Hiring Managers who want Developers who know
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 IoT is the most realistic The real world application of technologies by 2020 new tech 100%
0% Internet of Things (53%), just above Deep Learning (50%), is predicted to be the most adopted new technology in the next two years. The increasing connectivity of 0% homes, cars, and even cities is evidence of this technology having the best chance of real-world application by 2020. 40%
Application of Deep Learning is expanding from mobile speech recognition software 20% to places like the healthcare sector and automotive industry, which could explain why developers consider it a realistic technology. 0
As IoT and Deep Learning continue gaining momentum, it’s clear that picking up the skills needed to work on these technologies will be valuable for developers. Cloud ML Blockchain Deep learning Internet of Things Computer Vision On the other end of the spectrum, with a fluctuating cryptocurrency market but also uantum computing the support of many of the biggest companies in the world, blockchain is an Augmented or virtual reality unpredictable technology. ~20% of developers said the real-world application of blockchain in the next two years is overhyped. Overhyped Unrealistic Unsure Somewhat realistic Very realistic
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Best music to listen to while coding Dance and electronic 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 an ni music fuel coding a i a sessions
Developers who listen to music while working were most likely to turn to dance and electronic music to help them get into the flow of coding. Developers who a are 21 years old or younger were more likely than any other age group to listen to hip-hop and rap while working. i - a
S
a
21 and under 22 to 7 to 5 54 to 72
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 The #1 pet peeve: Badly One of the biggest bugs: written documentation ‘Wiped out database’
Developers’ struggles are real...and we wanted to find out what frustrated them the When asked about their biggest bug in production, deploying untested or broken most. Junior developers particularly despised badly written documentation while code was the most common response. We also found that ~10% of developers senior developers thought spaghetti code was the worst. admitted to wiping out the entire database.
The #1 pet peeve at work The biggest bug in production
0 10 20 0 40 50 0 70 0
Badly written documentation Deployed untested or broken code Spaghetti code Wiped out database
Everything is a top priority Shut down production server
Estimates treated as deadlines Turning on Firewall without allowing SSH access Ghost bugs Forgot to turn the IIS back on after deployment (Server down)
“Works on my machine” Other
Irrelevant messages from recruiters 0 20% 40% 0%
Meeting invitations Junior Developer Chat pings (Slack, Hipchat, Senior Developer or Higher etc.)
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Actions taken in response to concerns 58% of developers about employers took action in response Talked to your leadership about to concerns about your concerns uit your job or looked for employers another job Wouldn t recommend workplace to others 2018 was the year of taking action — from employee walkouts to company boycotts. Protested in personal capacity, but kept my work life separate In fact, 58% of developers polled took action in response to concerns about their company. Examples of concerns included affiliations with privacy misuse and Refused a project censorship. Close to 40% of developers approached their leadership about their concerns regarding their company. 23% quit their job or began looking for another Openly expressed concerns on position in response to misgivings. social media
Other
None of the above
0 10% 20% 0% 40%
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Actions taken in response to concerns about employers according to age
Conventional wisdom dictates that younger generations are more likely to take Talked to your leadership about action and older generations are more content with the status quo. That’s not what your concerns the data tells us. uit your job or looked for another job Across the board, the older the developers, the more likely they were to refuse to work on projects, protest, discourage others from joining companies, quit their jobs, Wouldn t recommend look for new jobs or speak to management in response to concerns about their workplace to others company. Protested in personal capacity, but kept my work life separate The only exception to this is when it comes to social media. Developers who are 21 years old or younger were the most likely to openly express concerns on social Refused a project media.
Openly expressed concerns on social media
Other
None of the above
0 20% 40% 0%
21 and under 22 to 7 to 5 54 to 72
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Immigration policies Impact of US immigration policies on all developers surveyed impact access to tech Discouraged me (or someone I know) from talent applying to jobs in the US Unable to get a work visa Silicon Valley has largely been composed of immigrants, with 57% of its technical workforce born outside of the United States. But, our survey found that 4 in 10 Made recruitment of tech developers were negatively impacted by immigration policies in 2018.
Decided not to attend Nearly 1 in 5 developers who applied for a US work visa were denied. In fact, many university in the US developers were discouraged from even applying. Almost 25% of developers stated that US immigration policies discouraged them or others they knew from applying Delayed founding or expanding company in US to jobs in the country.
Started a tech company outside of the US
4 in 10 developers have Not applicable been negatively impacted by immigration policies in 2018 None of the above
0 10% 20% 0% 40%
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Impact of US immigration policies on US hiring managers vs. global hiring managers
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 40 45
Made recruitment of tech The demand for developers in the United States is expected to grow much faster talent more difficult than average in the next 5 years. However, US employers are starting to have Discouraged me (or difficulty finding the developers they need. 30% of US hiring managers said someone I know) from applying to jobs in the US immigration policies made recruitment of tech talent difficult in 2018.
Hired offshore tech talent
US Hiring Managers Delayed founding or expanding company in US Global Hiring Managers
Unable to get a work visa
Started a tech company outside of the US
Decided not to attend university in the US
None of the above
Not applicable
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 The #1 way to lose What turns developers off from employers developer candidates: Not enough clarity on role or where I’ll be placed
Unclear roles Lack of (or slow) follow up
Not aligned with my culture or values Brainteasers or other irrelevant A poor interview experience is a surefire way to lose top candidates in today’s questions competitive tech talent market. Developers were most likely to be turned off by Not enough prep for what to employers who don’t provide enough clarity around roles or where they’ll be placed. expect process 49% said lack of values alignment was a turn-off and 14% reported not enough Negative press coverage diversity on the panel was a deal-breaker. Not enough diversity on the panel
Other
0 20% 40% 0% 0%
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 What developers look for in a job
0 10 20 0 40 50 0 70 0
Professional growth & Professional growth learning and work-life balance Work-life balance Competitive compensation
Interesting problems to matters most solve Flexibility ( schedule, remote) The most important factors for developers, across all job levels and functions, was Company culture the opportunity for professional growth and work-life balance. Preferred tech stack Developers are voracious learners by nature and necessity, given tech’s rapidly Strength of engineering changing pace. The importance of work-life balance for both senior and junior is team aligned with studies which have found that employees who do significant amounts Values aligned with yours of overtime are at a large risk of burnout, leading to a decrease in productivity, high Junior Developer turnover, and even health concerns. Prestigious company brand Senior Developer or Higher Workplace diversity
Hiring manager quality
Vacation policies
Other
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 What developers look for in a job in different regions
0 10 20 0 40 50 0 70 0
Professional growth & learning
Work-life balance
Competitive compensation
Interesting problems to For developers working in North and South America, compensation was the third solve most important aspect of a role. Flexibility (schedule, remote)
Even though Asian-Pacific, European, Middle Eastern, and African developers ranked Company culture having interesting problems to solve at work higher than salaries, compensation was still one of their top 5 priorities. Preferred tech stack
Strength of engineering team
Values aligned with yours
Prestigious company brand
Workplace diversity APAC EMEA AMERICAS
Hiring manager quality
Vacation policies
Other
[email protected] USA: India: UK: www.hackerrank.com +1-415-900-4023 +91-888-081-1222 +44-208-004-0258 Methodology
HackerRank conducted a study of developers to identify trends in developer skills, work, and employment opportunities. A total of 71,281 professional and student developers from more than 100 countries took the online survey from November 5 to November 27, 2018. The survey was hosted by SurveyMonkey and HackerRank recruited respondents via email from their community of over 5 million members and through social media sites.
Tests of significant differences were conducted at the .01 level (99% probability that the difference is real, not by chance). Percentages may not always add to 100% due to rounding.
More Research
201 Student 201 Women 201 Developer in Tech Developer Report Report Skills Report
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Insights based on 39,441 developers 39,441 developers took the survey
01 PROLOGUE HACKERRANK
Hello World█
The future of work will be very diferent. Irrespective of your job, it will become important for everyone to learn how to code. Coding helps enrich your computational thinking, which is powerful in making decisions. The traditional resume will go away and hiring will happen based on your skills frst.
We launched HackerRank in late 2012 with the goal of matching every developer to the right job. And the growth has been amazing — we reached 3.2M developers in the community and powered 2% of all developer hires last year.
For the frst time, we surveyed the HackerRank community to get a pulse on developer skills (when did they push code for the frst time, how do they learn coding, what are the favorite languages and frameworks, what do they want in a job, what hiring managers want in a candidate, and more). There are some great insights, from 39,441 responses, that we are happy to share with you today. Did you know that 1 in 4 developers learned to code before they could drive?
We hope you fnd the 2018 Developer Skills Report insightful and would love to discuss the fndings with you. E-mail us at [email protected]
Vivek Ravisankar Co-founder & CEO
03 LEARNING & EDUCATION HACKERRANK
1 in 4 developers started coding before they could drive█
It’s never too early — or too late! — to start coding. Of the roughly 39,000 develop- ers surveyed across all professional levels, more than a quarter of developers wrote their frst piece of code before they were 16 years old.
Meanwhile, of all the developers who started coding after the age of 26, 36% are now senior or even higher-level developers, growing quickly in their careers.
When did you start coding?
60%
40% elopers (%) elopers v 20% De 5.2% 4.8%
0 21.1% 49.6% 19.4% 5 to 10 11 to 15 16 to 20 21 to 25 26+ Age group
research.hackerrank.com 04 LEARNING & EDUCATION HACKERRANK
Nearly all developers have an insatiable thirst for learning█
It seems like every year there’s a new hallmark programming language, How did you learn to code? framework or library that proliferates across developer blogs. First, it was all about Backbone.js. Now, everyone is raving about AngularJS and React. Self teaching is the norm for developers of all ages. Even though 67% of developers have CS degrees, roughly 74% said they were at least partially self-taught. Self-taught 73.7%
On average, developers know 4 languages, and they want to learn 4 more. The degree of thirst for learning varies by generations — young developers School or university 69.4% between 18 and 24 plan to learn 6 languages, whereas folks older than 35 only plan to learn 3. Accelerated training 8.8%
Since programming is centered on independent research aimed at solving Other 2.2% new challenges, self-teaching is a major part of being a successful developer. In choosing what to learn next, the best guiding principle is to plant yourself in Developers (%) one discipline and learn tools as a means to grow. Tools will always change. Ultimately, it’s curiosity and genuine interest in programs that should fuel the drive to learn new tools and adapt to tech’s evolving landscape.
research.hackerrank.com 05 IN-DEMAND QUALIFICATIONS HACKERRANK
Almost all employers prioritize problem-solving skills first█
Problem-solving skills are almost unanimously the most important qualifcation Which core competencies do employers look for? that employers look for….more than programming languages profciency, debugging, and system design. Demonstrating computational thinking or the 1 to 100 101 to 1,000 1,001+ Average ability to break down large, complex problems is just as valuable (if not more employees employees employees so) than the baseline technical skills required for a job. Problem-solving 94.2% 94.7% 95.9% 94.9% Programming 55.2% 55.2% 59.0% 56.6% language proficiency There are, however, some nuances between what small companies care about Debugging 47.1% 45.0% 48.5% 47.1% System design 37.0% 39.8% 44.1% 40.3% most versus what large companies care about. For instance, smaller companies Performance 34.0% 35.0% 37.0% 36.0% look for framework profciency in candidates more than medium-sized to large optimization Code review companies. 36.3% 36.3% 35.0% 35.8% capability Testing 35.9% 34.4% 34.1% 34.8% Frameworks The diference may exist because having the right knowledge of frameworks 26.1% 23.3% 22.8% 24.2% proficiency is more important for startups since they need to launch code quickly, and Database design 23.2% 20.5% 18.8% 20.9% frameworks help developers push code faster. Codebase navigation 17.6% 14.2% 13.2% 15.1%
research.hackerrank.com 06 IN-DEMAND QUALIFICATIONS HACKERRANK
What you do matters more than what’s on your resume█
There’s a popular belief that recruiters favor candidates with CS degrees from What qualifcations do employers look for by company size? prestigious universities. But it turns out that they actually care about what you’ve done — not where you went to school. An overwhelming majority of hiring manag- ers said they look for proven skill, such as previous work, years of experience, and Experience 90.6% projects/Github. Regardless of company size, 9 out of 10 hiring managers say previous experience and years of experience — both indicators of skill — are among Portfolio (e.g. GitHub) 72.7% the most popular qualifcations.
Education 41.7%
What you do matters more than anything else. Small companies place the higher Training 23.7% value on the portfolio: 80% versus 66% of large companies.
Personal brand (e.g. skills & 8.2% endorsements) Qualifcations that generally bolster the resume (prestige of degree, education level, Employers (%) skill endorsements or certifcates) rank the lowest among what companies care about the most. These factors are not indicative of proven skill. The only top-ranked qualifcation that’s easily screenable from a resume is “years of experience” since work experience and portfolio are sometimes correlated with this qualifer. Since it’s more difcult to review individual portfolios at scale, years of experience is an alternative, resume-based signal for proven skill — although this completely neglects high performers who grew quickly in their roles.
research.hackerrank.com 07 TALENT ATTRACTION HACKERRANK
Assessing skills proves to be the biggest hiring challenge, more than talent shortage█
What’s the biggest challenge when hiring talent? Which assessment tools do employers use most?
Hard to assess skills before Resume screening 80.9% 60.8% onsite Other problem-solving, 55.8% logic challenges Time-consuming interviews 47.5% Referrals 50.8%
41.1% Remote, live interviewing Not enough talent 26.7% tool
Not enough diverse Personality test 25.2% 28.3% candidates HackerRank coding 19.2% challenges Calibrating the job 26.8% description Outsourced human 6.6% technical interview panel Competition from other 22.1% companies Other 3.7%
Companies (%) Companies (%)
According to 7,000+ employers, resumes are still by far the most common way While technical hiring managers still primarily rely on the resume to evaluate developers are assessed today, according to our survey — 81% of hiring managers software developers as the frst step of the interview, almost all agree that assess- say they use resumes as the frst step in the applicant screening process. ing skill is one of the hardest challenges when flling technical roles — there’s a mismatch in what they’re looking for and the tools they’re using to evaluate it. When asked what the biggest hiring challenge is, the same hiring managers said Screening with resumes is a barrier for hiring managers to fnd the proven skill assessing skill is their number one problem — as opposed to lack of talent. Mean- because the factors that hiring managers care most about (proven skills) are not while, only 55% of developers said resumes were a good refection of their abilities. screenable from resumes. research.hackerrank.com 08 TALENT ATTRACTION HACKERRANK
Work-life balance beats perks█
If you look at any typical career page for technology job descriptions, hiring What do developer candidates want most when job searching? managers commonly highlight tech stack, mission statement, and perks to entice developers to apply. This is not what hiring managers should be focusing Good work-life balance 56.5% on when competing for talent. Professional growth and learning 55.1%
Compensation 45.4%
Instead, the number one thing that developers want most above all is a strong Smart people/team 43.6% work-life balance. Developers ranked work-life balance as the most desired Interesting problems to solve 43.3% trait, slightly more than professional growth and learning, which came in Company culture 39.2% Preferred tech stack 27.4% second. More specifcally, the Americans crave work-life balance more than Impact on product 16.2% developers in other regions like Asia and Europe. Company mission 14.3%
Proximity to where you live 13.5%
Though it was ranked slightly less important to people working at smaller Perks 9.9% companies, it was still in the top three. Work-life balance is most important to Stability of a large company 9.0% Funding and valuation 4.4% developers 25 years and older, and — unsurprisingly — ranked less important to developers between 18 and 24. Developers (%)
In some ways, we’ve discovered a slight contradiction here. Developers want work-life Geographically, the distinctions aren’t too major, with a few exceptions. balance but they also have an insatiable thirst and need for learning. In fact, the Canadians care most about compensation, while Australians cite company number of new tools to learn can sometimes feel overwhelming for developers. But the culture as the #1 thing they care about in a job. best fuel for learning is curiosity and genuine interest in technologies that develop in your domain. Focusing on doing what you enjoy (as opposed to trying to learn every- thing) can help strike a better work-life balance. research.hackerrank.com 09 TALENT ATTRACTION HACKERRANK
Flexible work schedules are huge█
We realize work-life balance could mean a lot of things to diferent people. So, How can employers improve work-life balance? we dug a bit deeper into what developers really want.
Allow flexible work hours 89.3% By and large, work-life balance can be supported with fexible hours — 10 am to 8 pm schedules are commonplace. Remote working 80.5% Focus on outcomes 78.5%
Developers want to work for managers that focus on output, not time spent in Encouraged vacation time 55.3% the ofce chair. And telecommuting options are helpful as well. Remote working benefits 54.3% is a particularly strong desire for developers 25 and older, and folks between 25 Foster creativity 41.0% - 44 are the strongest proponents of shutting down email after hours. No after-hours emails 40.9%
Health initiatives 39.9%
Help with daily errands 22.7%
Help with childcare 19.9%
Developers (%)
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